With the unveiling of my advertise page and supporters section in the sidebar, I feel obligated to explain a bit more about the auctioning off of the ads for that section.

After the changes I made to the theme, I had somewhat intended to sell some ad space in what has become the supporters section. The biggest problem I had was that I didn’t know how much to charge for these spots.

Around the same time I entered an advertising space giveaway from blogs for money. In the post announcing the giveaway, they mentioned that it would be awhile before anyone would be willing to pay for advertising space on their site. This got me thinking about if and when people would be willing to pay for advertising space here. My conclusion was something along the lines of “gee, it would be nice if they would just let me know” and that was the end of that.

However, I also read a post about bidding on a DevDad Ad. The method that Mike uses is quite a bit different than my method and the price continually goes up. Also, your ad might stay on the site for several months, or it could be gone in a day or two. This is where the auction idea came from, but I wanted something a bit more sure for the advertisers.

When I combined these two thoughts, I came up with the sales format that I am using for my supporters section.

So here is how this is going to work. The minimum bid is and always will be 0.00 for a spot in my Supporters section. That means that you can get your ad featured in the supporters section for one month for free. You can place that 0.00 bid as many months in a row as you would like.

If my blog has reached the point that you would be willing to pay for advertising space, enter the amount you would be willing to pay. This will not necessarily be how much it will cost you though, it could be less.

The top 10 bids will be the winners and if there is a tie, the one that bid first wins. Example: If there are 12 people who bid 0.00 and 5 who bid 5.00, the first 5 that bid 0.00 and the 5 who bid 5.00 will be the winners and they will all get the advertising for free.

There will be ten winners each month to rotate through the four spots in the supporters section. The ad rotation in the supporters section is completely random and all ads have equal chance of being shown. You can bid on as many of the 10 spots with as many different bid amounts as you would like by indicating a different campaign number for each.

If you have any questions about this, contact me or leave a comment. Be sure to check out my advertise page as well.